Tampa Bay Buccaneers Draft rumors 2021: Davis Mills in round one?
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are bringing back all 22 starters from their Super Bowl-winning squad from a season ago.
What better time to add a new quarterback, then?
Although the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have the GOAT under center, they currently don’t have anyone behind him. Josh Rosen bolted for San Francisco before the end of the season. Both Blaine Gabbert and Ryan Griffin remain unsigned free agents.
This Bucs team will likely hold out for a veteran backup option to Brady just in case (Teddy Bridgewater, anyone?) but that doesn’t mean they will pass on quarterbacks in the 2021 NFL Draft if they find one they like a lot.
Peter Schrager of NFL Network and Good Morning Football released his first 2021 NFL mock draft and had the Tampa Bay Buccaneers making a very intriguing selection at pick number 32 overall.
That mock draft selection is Stanford quarterback Davis Mills. Interestingly enough, predicting the top fits for the top-10 quarterbacks in the 2021 NFL Draft class, we had Davis Mills to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
If you have a loaded starting-22, you can afford to use your first-round pick on a guy who might not be playing a ton this year (in Mills’ case, perhaps not at all).
It seems like we have been speculating about which player could be Tom Brady’s eventual replacement for the last decade, but the guy just keeps on playing. At some point, however, he’s going to decide to be done.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers don’t need to draft a hedge for Tom Brady so much as they might want to bring in a quarterback prospect they really like while they have the opportunity to do so.
If the Bucs really like Davis Mills and buy into his potential, they should take him. It would give the 2021 NFL Draft class an unprecedented three first-round quarterbacks with 17 starts or fewer at the college level (Mac Jones, Trey Lance).
Mills started just 13 games at Stanford after he was a five-star recruit in high school, and he certainly has some flashes on tape.
Is he a first-round player, though? It’s tough to say that definitively, given how small the sample size is.
Is it worth burning a couple of years of a rookie quarterback contract just to make sure you have this guy two or three years down the road? That’s impossible to know at this point.
The reality is, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are in a situation right now where they have the luxury of being able to make a move like this at the game’s most valuable position. Mills would have the chance to learn behind the greatest to ever do it in Tom Brady, and Brady’s legend doesn’t dictate any pressure for the team to play a late first-round pick.
Because of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ situation returning all 22 starters from last year’s team, a QB at the bottom of round one — even if you consider Davis Mills to be a massive reach at this point — would make some sense.